Now I Lay Me Down
by lexlady
Summary: Special Agent Lucas Scott is the best profiler in the FBI, but he doesn’t like to follow the rules.  When they bring in straightlaced Doctor Peyton Sawyer to reign him in the only rule they find will be hard to follow is the no fraternization rule.
1. Chapter 1

Flashback

Tensions were as high as they could be as the stand off between the FBI and the serial killer, Thomas Crow. The ex-cop had left a long and gory trail across the Bible belt, leaving the police gloating riddles and racking up enough bodies and public fear in his wake that the FBI had to be called in.

He'd been with the bureau for two years by the time Crow had taken his fifth victim and it had been his profile that had led to his identification. The cat and mouse game had finally ended at a warehouse with two agents working on fifeteen hours of sleep apiece and a cold blooded killer with no remorse, nothing to loose, and a hostage.

His partner had taken the front and he had gone around back after they'd called for appropriate back up.

He'd had him in his sites. His partner was trying to talk him down.

"Where's the golden child? Where's my boy!" Crow had cried. He knew he was talking about him. He'd been the first to decipher the riddle Crow had left and eventually put together a profile. He hadn't been sure how Crow had found out that it was him who'd written it, but since that moment, every note since had been left addressed specifically to him, always attached with a safety pin to the victim's bloodied clothing.

"Crow, there is no way out of here." Sirens. They were coming upon the warehouse. They just needed a few more minutes. "Let that girl go. You have control here, you can walk outta here."

"But I'm not done with my work son. You know how it is," Crow had explained calmly over the soft whimpers of his young captive. He had known it was not a safe sign, though. In his profile he'd written Crow could turn on a dime but all he's been thinking was he had to get that little girl out of there. He had to get her out by the book.

He saw his partner well out of his line of fire and he knew that their back up was there. He could've taken that shot. Crow was agitated. He was getting caged in.

He could've taken that shot. He'd had it and he knew that Crow wouldn't leave this place without making someone bleed. Crow had one purpose. To fill his quota and this little girl-

He could've taken the shot. But he hadn't…and Crow had started firing. He had started firing faster than he'd thought possible. He saw that little girl fall and all hell broke loose.

* * *

Her three inch heels clacked loudly and rhythmically against the linoleum floor of the Hoover building, adding themselves to the sounds that made up that building the eight thirty in the morning. Flashing her badge, she checked her gun, walked through the metal detector smiling at the guard who's name she would later learn was Pete.

Stepping onto the elevator she pressed the button she needed and kept her even stare cool and straight forward, ignoring the stares she felt on her back. So was the life of a girl in the boys club. It was why at 5 foot 8 and a half she felt the need to wear heels. It was bad enough she had to prove herself daily because she was a girl, and a blonde and a beautiful one to boot. She'd be damned if she had to look _up _at anybody.

She didn't work her ass off at in the academy to get written off as some air headed twit who some had mistakenly given a badge and a gun. In fact she had graduated at the top of her class, getting her doctorate in forensic pathology just a year before.

She could out shoot every man in her class and was trained in hand to hand combat. It was the reason no one called her the nickname she'd acquired in the Academy to her face. Doctor Stems. She had made the mistake of wearing a skirt one day and the nickname had been born. It was just one more thing she had to fight against, so she began wearing slacks and heels so if any little smart ass wanted to call her Doc Stems they'd have to look up at her or straight into her eyes to do it. She was smart, clear headed, capable, and trying to stay afloat in a sea of testosterone.

She stepped off on her floor and her hand unconsciously smoothing out her hair, which was pulled into a tight no nonsense ponytail, as she made her way to the section chief's office. Adjusting her forest green suit jacket she knocked on the door and opened it after hearing a terse "Enter."

"Section chief Hartman, special agent-"

" Peyton Sawyer," the large man finished for her, looking up at her from his paper work to regard the young woman in front of him. "Your reputation proceeds you agent. You come with the highest recommendations."

"Thank you sir," Peyton replied, graciously. She shook his hand and then sat, crossing her long legs.

"Let's get to the gut of it agent Sawyer. I'm sure you're anxious to see what your new assignment will be. I can tell you it's not quite what you're used to at Quantico."

"I'm sure I'm up for the challenge sir," Peyton replied confidently. Hartman raised an eyebrow at the young woman and nodded.

He wasn't so sure this Sawyer girl would be right for this assignment at all. First off she was far too pretty. Her suit was tailored well and unlike the unflattering, boxy suits some female agents chose to adorn themselves with her suit actually fit her and complimented her shape. She barely had any make up on and then there was the severe ponytail that made his own forehead ache just looking at it.

"Are you familiar with an agent named Lucas Scott?" Peyton was taken aback.

"Yes sir, but purely by reputation. Graduated from Yale with a doctorate in psychology. He's considered one of the best analysts in the bureau. His profile led to the capture of the Sacramento strangler several years ago."

Peyton had never met Lucas Scott. His reputation certainly proceeded him wherever he went, though. Not only was he considered, at a young age, one of the best profilers the bureau had ever seen in years, but he was also a loose cannon. Special Agent Lucas Scott thumbed his nose at rules and was considered FBI's bad boy. He had scared off four partners in the last six months and when he was seen in the halls, his hands were shoved deep into his pockets with his eyes glued to his shoes, gaining him the nickname of Broody at the academy. Peyton had a sinking feeling she knew where this was going.

"We want to partner you with him in the violent crimes section. You'll write field reports tracking Agent Scott's progress."

"With all due respect sir, am I babysitting or just spying?"

Hartman once again rose an eyebrow. This girl had some spunk. Maybe this would work after all. He hid a smirk and replied, "I see you know more about his reputation than you said. Agent Sawyer, Lucas Scott was a damn good agent, but he's a loose cannon. We need someone we trust to keep him line."

"I see." So I'm to be his mother, she thought. The fact that he said Agent Scott _was _a good agent wasn't lost on her either.

"Agent Scott also works on a side project. Are you familiar with Project Hill?"

Peyton felt her blood pressure beginning to rise. She cleared her throat. "Yes sir. I believe it deals with unexplained phenomenon, but I was under the impression that this section of the FBI was an urban myth."

"Not entirely agent Sawyer. These files do deal with…unexplained phenomenon and it is also where many of our unsolved cases get buried. Agent Scott has taken an interest in this cases and has been granted permission to pursue them. Your field reports will also track the validity of these cases."

Peyton kept herself from shaking her head. This was unbelievable. "So this isn't a VCS assignment. I'm being assigned to discredit agent Scott's work on Project Hill."

"We are asking you, as a medical doctor to give us a scientific analysis of your findings agent Sawyer. You know what they say, if it looks bad, it's bad for the FBI. Can we count on you agent Sawyer?"

Peyton rose. She could exactly chuck her size 7's at him and tell him to screw himself. She was a girl in the boy's club and that meant playing the game. "Yes sir."

**I know what some of you are thinking. Sounds a bit like the X-Files. I gotta say that is where my inspiration came from, but this story won't be so much about the paranormal and conspiracies as it will be about the affect the work has on Peyton and Lucas's private lives. **

**Plus, I feel like most of the Leyton stories I read have the same plot. They either A: Haven't seen each other in years and broke up for some obscure reason or B: Haven't seen each other in seven years and now Peyton is back in Tree Hill with the son/daughter she didn't tell Lucas about. It wouldn't be that big a deal if they were all well written and had some creative original twist to it. Not to say some of them aren't well written and made original. When I come across an entertaining story I like, I will review and let the author know.**

**I just wanted to do something compleletely different by Leyton standards and I encourage other Leyton authors to do the same. Thanks!**

**Review please!**


	2. Chapter 2

Peyton stalked down the hall, silently fuming. Project Hill? Project freaking Hill? This had to be some sort of punishment. She couldn't imagine any self respecting agent getting that assignment and not laughing in the face of whoever gave it to them. Project Hill was a joke, a non section. It had been buried so deep within the annals of J. Edger's depths that it was practically a ghost story at the academy.

And then there was being assigned to Special Agent Lucas Scott. She was actually looking forward to meeting him. His brilliance was not to be denied. He had only been twenty four, being recruited by the FBI early out of Yale, but he was one of the greatest minds at the FBI. People who worked with him said it was frightening to watch him get into the head of a killer. It was no wonder he walked the halls in the manner he did, as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

There was much talk of why Lucas Scott did all he could to become a pariah. But, the funniest thing about the agent was that when he began his work at the FBI, he was as green and as straight laced as they came. He had begun his career as the golden boy of the Bureau, but two years later it was like he just got sick of being at the top.

Peyton didn't exactly like the idea of spying, let alone spying on a fellow agent, off his rocker or not. The section chief didn't call it spying in so many words, but she was a smart girl and in this business you had to learn how to read between the lines.

She stepped onto a floor that looked as though it hadn't been used in quite some time. A few agents scampered around here and there like cockroaches in their early stages of infestation. Walking to the very end of the hall she looked up to see the name plate on the door: Special Agent Lucas Scott.

She raised her hand to knock on the door and when she heard no reply she knocked again harder. She stood a moment at a loss as to whether or not she should just walk in or not. He was her senior agent after all.

"You lookin' for Scott?" An agent asked from halfway down the hall.

"Yes," Peyton replied. "Is he in?"

"I don't know, but if he is he might not be able to hear you. He usually has that frickin ipod jammed in his ears."

"Oh." Peyton turned back to the door. "Thank you," she called back, but the agent had already disappeared behind another door. Shrugging, Peyton gingerly turned the door handle and peeked her head inside. He was there, his feet propped up on a low bookcase, leaning dangerously far back in his chair with his back to her. He was indeed, listening to an ipod and she could hear the music from clear across the room. She smiled, recognizing the song as one of her favorite off a Van Halen album.

He was pouring over a file and if he sensed her presence, he chose to ignore it for the time being. Peyton wasn't sure how to alert him to her arrival. Mostly she was worried about scaring him and having him fall backwards out of his chair and cracking his head open. She could see it now: _Yes, Section Chief Hartman, I thought a severe concussion would be the best way to solve your Lucas Scott problem. No need to thank me._

She glanced around the office. It was messy, but an organized messy and she knew that Agent Scott would know exactly where everything was. She saw some basketball paraphernalia on the walls, an old basketball in the corner, a poster of Bigfoot, and noted with a soft smile, a picture on his desk of a dark haired woman and man with a little blonde boy grinning between them. The boy she assumed was Agent Scott, as the man tilting in the chair in front of her was blonde as well.

His thick tawny strands were worn short and slightly spiky. Suddenly, her moment of snooping was interrupted, as he shut the file, righted himself in his chair, and took his ear buds out carefully, and one at a time.

He turned slowly in his chair to meet the visitor he sensed walk into his office earlier.

Neither of them spoke for quite some time and in the back of both their minds they realized how awkwardly long the silence had been. Peyton was embarrassed to find she hadn't taken a breath from the moment Agent Scott laid his piercing blue eyes on her. Well, the adjective Peyton used to describe them was smoldering.

She was only slightly shocked to find that Agent Lucas Scott was an extremely attractive man. There was talk at the academy of how handsome Agent Scott was. In fact she'd heard the word sexy thrown around as well, but Peyton didn't pay attention to that type of gossip. Now she knew that the rumors on that end were true….very, very true. She tried to inconspicuously take in a breath without looking as though she was gasping for much needed air.

Agent Scott was having different thoughts running through his head. He couldn't figure out why his usual witty first greeting wasn't forming. In fact, no thoughts were forming. His body's response to her was completely primordial. She was lovely. With those huge green eyes and long graceful limbs, he had to hand it to the section chief. He sure knew how to pick'em.

"Agent Scott," Peyton finally said, silently patting herself on the back for saying his name without stuttering. "My name is Peyton Sawyer. I've been assigned to work with you."

"So you're the new lion tamer, huh?" Lucas silently applauded himself for not saying something stupid and for not drooling. "You can come in a little closer Agent Sawyer. I'm not sure what they told you about me upstairs, but I don't bite."

Peyton smiled and took a few steps closer and put her hand out for him to shake. He took hold of it, his eyes never leaving her steady gaze, and pumped it firmly.

"I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard quite a bit about you," Peyton said amiably, shaking off the tingling sensation she got when he shook her hand. At her words, Lucas's face suddenly changed, becoming more guarded.

There is a reason they sent a sexy woman to work with you, Luke, he cautioned himself. They had tried this tactic before, but he'd chased her off too with the rest. He hated being a jackass to a lady. His mother had raised him to be a gentleman. But, this woman, Agent Sawyer would be no different from the others. Lucas Scott worked _alone_.

"I'm sure you have," he replied. Peyton's brows furrowed a bit, hearing what she deciphered was a bit of sarcasm in his voice.

"Um, yes. I read your monograph on serial killers and mob mentality and found it fascinating,"

"Did you?" It was like running into a brick wall. Peyton reminded herself there was a reason he'd gone through several partners in only a few short months. He was being impossible.

"Yes, I did. Your reputation proceeds you Agent Scott-"

"Does it?" was his infuriatingly dry and monotone reply. Peyton's flaring nostrils were the only indication that she was annoyed. He scoffed lightly, and turned his back on her, walking back behind his desk, and picking up a file.

"Despite what you may think, you still remain highly regarded at the academy. We've studied your profiles and your method of wor-"  
"I thought your field of expertise was slicing and dicing," Lucas interrupted. Peyton was momentarily taken aback.

"If you meant to ask if I am a pathologist then, yes. I'm a doctor. That is my field of expertise."

"Oh, I didn't ask you if you were a pathologist. I _know_ you're a pathologist. You graduated at the top of your class at Stanford University. Recruited out of medical school. You wrote your senior thesis on the correlation between music and theories of Einstein. Impressive."

"So what are you profiling me now?"

Lucas paused, noting quickly her raised eyebrow and the slight transference of body weight to the left leg. She was feisty and he only allowed himself the slightest of smiles before replying, cockily,

"It's what I do."

By now Peyton was thoroughly pissed off. This guy was a dick! "If you have any qualms about my qualifications than-"

"No qualms. I'm sure you're very qualified Agent Sawyer. But some of these cases I deal with can't exactly be defined or quantified by scientific methods."

"Agent Scott, the world revolves on science. Everything that _actually exists_ can be explained scientifically."

"Ah," he simpered, opening the file folder he held. "A non-believer."

"And you are?" Peyton asked, crossing her arms. She had her beliefs aside from science, but she wasn't about to share them with a douche bag.

"I've seen things," Lucas replied, vaguely.

"So what," Peyton began walking around his office pointing to posters. "things like ghosts, aliens, Bigfoot, God? Finding Jesus in a piece of toast?"

Lucas smiled indulgently, liking the fact that he was getting under her skin. "Actually, I'm kind of an atheist," he replied off handedly. Peyton spun and pinned him with an incredulous stare.

"Wu-wait, you don't believe in God, but…you believe in Bigfoot?"

"Well it sounds ridiculous when _you_ say it, but yeah pretty much," Lucas responded dryly. Peyton couldn't keep herself from rolling her eyes.

"Okay," He stood and walked over to her. "Give me your expert medical opinion on this then." She took the file he handed her and opened it.

"Pretty standard series of kidnappings. Bodies of the victims are found a week later…." she summarized, clinically. The case was pretty brutal. The victims all seemed to be random, varying ages and both male and female, all of whom would turn up later spread eagle in a field, with their bodies bled. "It's seems like a cult killing. I see nothing supernatural about this," she concluded.

"Isn't there?"

She glanced up at him with a frown, at his monotonous query and flipped the page, cringing internally at the crime scene photos. Female agents were expected to cry at the drop of a hat. And she'd known some fellow agents who couldn't walk away fast enough and ended up crying in front of a room full of male agents. No one wants to get partnered with a basket case crybaby.

Lucas was reading her face closely and saw her brows furrow. "It gets better," he said off handedly, walking back to his chair. She read through the file, shut it then looked up at Lucas who was once again playing the dare devil on his chair.

"Aliens?" she scoffed.

"How did you know?" He asked this quite innocently and it rankled her.

"Lucas any Star Trek nerd would equate unidentified objects in a human being that could just as easily be shrapnel, by the way, with implants and alien abductions."

"So you're saying…it's what a hoax?"

"No, not at all. I'm saying what was found in this man may have been many other things and not an implant."

"I didn't say it was an implant," Lucas said in a devil may care tone that made her want to strangle him and rip his shirt off at the same time.

"That autopsy you're reading-"

"Is incomplete," she finished looking it over more closely. "There's no Y-incision done, no plausible cause of death. Who the hell did this?"

"And that was the one Warshaw managed to wrangle away from the next town over. Oleander Wisconsin, the town these killing originally started in and the town that never asked the FBI for assistance. Warshaw, the town in these files, began loosing residents just three weeks ago. Their local law enforcement is stumped, but convinced all the answers lie where they believe the killings began."

"In Oleander Wisconsin. Agent Scott, what about Oleander's law enforcement. Why haven't they come forward if their own residents are dying?"

"Who knows. Fear, maybe they're even in on it. I don't know. But, I think you were right when you said we may be dealing with a cult."

"But, what makes this a Hill case?"

"Nobody else wanted it," Lucas shrugged. She stared at him for a moment in disbelief. He favored her with the faint lifting of one side of his mouth, a mouth she would be guiltily fantasizing about later.

He grabbed his ipod and picked up another file. "We leave tomorrow morning at seven." He turned his back on her and added over his shoulder "Oh, and bring a poncho. I hear it's a little rainy there this time of year."

Lucas stuck his earbuds back in his ears and began blasting Van Halen into his ear drums once more at such a decibel she was surprised he could still hear. And just like that she was dismissed from his presence. Confused, flustered, and a more than a bit furious, Peyton turned on her heels and walked out of the office, muttering "Poncho my ass."

In his chair Lucas watched her go through the reflection in a plaque he had on the wall. Even the reflection of her ass was hot. Damn. Once the door shut, Lucas allowed himself a smile, before wiping it from his features. Careful Scott, he warned himself. Don't form attachments. She was, after all there to spy on him.


End file.
